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Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

A debate can be had on the Federal Reserve and its efficacy over the years.  It was established as I understand it to be a means of maximizing employment and stabilizing prices. This is more or less controlled by raising or lowering interest rates to keep inflation at around 2%.  Certainly many factors can play into the rate of inflation such as supply chain issues and shortage of labor. However, the main factor is too much money circulating in the economy, and since it is the government in Washinton D.C. who actually controls the quantity of money as they are the only entity that can print money, the administration taking up residence there bears the burden of responsibility.

But the main reason prices have skyrocketed since 2021 is the shortsighted policies of the Biden administration. One example of this is Biden's war on fossil fuels. America is now producing millions of fewer barrels of oils - what does that do to the world price at a time of rising demand?  A trip to the gas station these days answers that question pretty easily. In addition there have been three massive (trillions of taxpayer dollars) spending bills (which some RINO's have been complicit in passing) flushed into our economy and mostly financed with the debt. The government is spending more and more on social programs, thereby increasing the demand for goods and services, while reducing the supply.  Printing money we don't have, taxing workers, businesses and producers and subsizing non-workers and consumption gives us the inflation we have today.  The buck stops at the man sitting in the White House today (or those sitting behind him).  After all, a year ago Biden promised us that inflation was only "temporary".  Easy for him to say.  

John Jackson

MM, I wouldn’t give Biden a complete pass on the inflation issue, but Trump was hardly critical of the Fed’s low interest rate policy and he was more than happy to have several trillion dollars in Covid relief money doled out  on his watch.  And let’s not forget about the Trump tax cut that pumps $400 billion each and every year into the economy to fuel the party (and raise the deficit) – it’s the inflationary gift that keeps giving, year after year, as far as the eye can see.

Your statement that “the main reason prices have skyrocketed since 2021 is the shortsighted policies of the Biden administration” is the simplistic and hyper-partisan stuff that is repeated endlessly on Fox News and other far-right outlets.  We don’t have a centrally planned economy (something that conservatives used to celebrate but you seem to favor) and we don’t have state run oil companies in this country - oil companies choose how much oil to produce based on their own calculations of how to maximize profit. 

You avoided my question so I'll ask you again -  if it's all Biden's fault can you explain why inflation is now a worldwide phenomenon? The economies of virtually all the world's advanced nations are experiencing inflation very similar to ours.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

John, may I just first clarify one thing.....I do not favor in any way shape or form a central planning government.  Further it is difficult to continue to ignore the constant references to Fox News and "far-right" sources when you respond to my comments,  That seems to me to be a means to denigrate my opinions.

Nevertheless, I will share that what is now happening around the world is the result of the plan to organize the world under "sustainable development" goals as initially put forth in Agenda 21, which has now become Agenda 30, both of which are being employed by leaders of countries all around the globe who meet at Davos every year to plan the implementation of a one world order. 

  “UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, all energy, and all human beings in the world.”

You ask how this is happening aroung the world....this is how and why.  Don't take my word for it....take theirs:

                                                In Their Own Words

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All of these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” Club of Rome

“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced. A major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” United Nations on Agenda 21

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” Maurice Strong, Chairman UN Earth Summit 1992

“We must go through a wrenching transformation to rid us of the horrors of the Twentieth Century’s Industrial Revolution.” Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”

Timothy Wirth (President, United Nations Foundation)

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Christine Stewart (Former Canadian Minister of the Environment)

“It doesn’t matter what is true. It only matters what people believe is true.”

Paul Watson (co-founder of Green Peace.)

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”

Christiana Figueres (Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) 

“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million world-wide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species returning throughout the world…”

Dave Foreman (Co-founder of Earth First)

“The native ecosystems and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.”

Reed Noss, (A Creator of the Wildlands Project)

“Human beings, as a species have no more value than slugs.”

John Davis (Editor of Earth First Journal).

“Among environmentalists sharing two or three beers, the notion is quite common that, if only some calamity could wipe out the human race, other species might once again have a chance.” Richard Conniff (Audubon Magazine)

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Prince Phillip (World Wildlife Fund)

“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

David Brower, Sierra Club

“All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan… We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.”

Preamble to Agenda 2030

“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of world government.” Mikhail Gorbachev (address to the State of the World Forum)

“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” Paul Ehrlich (Prof of Population Studies, Stanford U.)

“Regionalism must precede Globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions, and up through the United Nations itself.” UN Commission on Global Governance

“No one fully understands how, or even if, sustainable development can be achieved. However, there is growing consensus that it must be accomplished at the local level if it is to be achieved on a global basis.”

The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide, published by ICLEA, 1996

“We believe planning should be a tool for allocating resources…and eliminating the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society…because the free market has proven incapable of doing this.” Statement of Principles, Plannersnetwork.org, American Planning Association.

“What then is the most effective transition strategy? The essential aim is not to fight against consumer-capitalist society, but to build the alternative to it.”

Author Ted Trainer, Transition to a Sustainable and Just World.

“Simply shutting down the economy is not going to get us to our goal. So, just like we need innovation for COVID-19, we also need to get rid of emissions from all the different sectors and bring down climate change… This crosses many areas, transportation, industry, electricity, all those things, and agriculture – contribute to emissions…”

Bill Gates on the Covid lockdowns.

“Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.”

Harvey Ruvin (ICLEI)

“The right to full employment and ending unemployment by guaranteeing a job at a living wage in a safe workplace, empowered by labor unions; single-payer Medicare for all, tuition-free education from pre-school to college, and the right to affordable housing.” The Economic Bill Of Rights – the Green New Deal

“Within a year, 77% of institutional investors intend to stop buying into companies that aren’t, in some way, Sustainable. If it’s not done by following Sustainable rules, it will not be financed.” The Great Reset

“No industry or business will be spared from the impact of these challenges. Millions of companies risk disappearing and many industries face an uncertain future; a few will thrive.” Klaus Schwab, Covnd-19: The Great Reset

“The chaotic growth of cites will be replaced by a dynamic system of urban settlement…The region is formed by the economic interdependence of its development… The region has a single system of transportation, a centralized administration, and a united system of education and research.”

Soviet Russian architect Alexei Gutnov. The Ideal Communist City. 1968

Michael McLeod

MM/JJ

In fairness, here's why a lot of people include Fox, as John did, in the category of right-wing pandering and outright disinformation. As a long-time journalist with a post-grad degree from osu and 50 (omg) years in the trade to my credit, I've been meaning to say something about this for a while, and this seemed like a good opportunity to say it.

This isn't to say that they aren't right - as in correct - in many instances. It's just a flat out reality that they do not operate, with regard to the truth, by the same rules I had to abide by while employed by more traditional, and I would have to say responsible, news outlets (which, I get the impression, you tend to be dismissive of, and which is, of course, your right.) This is not to say the outlets I would call responsible don't have their own predjudices about certain issues and individuals. It's just that those predjudices are systematically kept at bay in favor of rational, fair-minded coverage and objective reality more often than not.

I'll refrain from commenting on the rest of your post and leave the two of you to hash it out however you choose.

A recent story helps to make my point:

The problem with Fox “News,” the cable TV channel, isn’t just what it is — it’s also what it isn’t.

It is a purveyor of propaganda and misinformation. What it’s not is a source of “news” — at least not by any normal definition.

That’s one of the conclusions I drew from a fascinating new study in which arch-conservative Fox TV viewers were paid to watch CNN for a month. The study, titled “The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers,” was performed by a pair of political scientists: David Broockman, who teaches at UC-Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla, who teaches at Yale.

According to Broockman and Kalla, when these Fox viewers watched CNN, they heard about all sorts of things Fox wasn’t telling them. They processed that information. They took it in. They became more knowledgeable about what was really going on in the United States.

The experiment didn’t change their political preferences — certainly not in just one month. But it slightly altered their perceptions of certain key issues and political candidates.

The study authors differentiated between “traditionally emphasized forms of media influence,” like agenda setting and framing, and what they call “partisan coverage filtering”: the choice to selectively report information about selective topics, based on what’s favorable to the network’s partisan side, and ignore everything else.

One lesson here is that Fox viewers are reachable with real news. While fact-checks have been known to get people to believe falsehoods even more strongly, plain news — and even opinionated news — still registers.

But the biggest takeaway for me is the realization that Fox viewers aren’t just manipulated and misinformed — they are literally being made ignorant by their consumption habits. Watching Fox, they hear a lot of “news-like” things, but they don’t learn about what’s really happening.

And here’s where we in the mainstream media can do something useful: We can stop talking about Fox like it’s a different form of news — and start talking about how it isn’t news at all. It’s the opposite of news. It’s instead of news. It’s the absence of news.

We can explain more clearly that real news organizations present viewers with the information they need regardless of whether it hurts or helps a specific cause or political party.

Mainstream, reality-based journalists have been way too charitable to Fox over the years, partly because the network once employed some of them, and partly to maintain the façade of political neutrality.

But it’s time to firmly declare that Fox is not news.

The study started with 763 far-right loyal Fox News viewers, then randomly assigned 40 percent to a “treatment” group. That group was then paid $15 an hour to watch up to seven hours of CNN per week during September 2020, during prime-time hours. Participants were given quizzes to make sure they were paying attention.

Mainstream, reality-based journalists have been way too charitable to Fox over the years, partly because the network did once employ some of them.

It found that CNN and Fox were covering dramatically different things that month. The severity of Covid and the Trump administration’s failures to control it “were by far the most common topics on CNN” — even as Fox downplayed it and praised Trump’s behavior. By contrast, Fox News spent 15,236 words discussing “Biden/Democrats support for extreme racial ideology/protests,” to CNN’s 1,300.

The study found that the CNN-watching group was “much more likely to see issues covered on CNN (COVID-19) instead of on Fox News (racial protests) as important.” The group also “became more likely to agree that if Donald Trump made a mistake, Fox News would not cover it.”

One particularly hopeful finding was that watching CNN caused Fox viewers “to become substantially more supportive of vote-by-mail than the control group.” Both networks covered the topic extensively, with CNN emphasizing facts about how secure it is, and Fox falsely hawking its susceptibility to fraud. Republican measures to block Democratic constituencies from voting and challenge results not to their liking depend heavily on Republican voters believing lies about Democrats engaging in massive fraud.

(Notably, attitudes around race, climate change and policing remained unchanged.)

The study authors’ assertion that partisan slants happen on both sides of the cable news spectrum is the one false note in their report. Fox and CNN are not different flavors of news, they are different things entirely. News organizations with any legitimate claim to that title do not keep important information from the public based on which party it benefits. CNN — or primetime MSNBC — may be opinionated, but they remain fundamentally fact-based. Fox does not. (MSNBC, like NBC News, is part of NBCUniversal.)

You could certainly argue — and I do — that corporate news does its own kind of coverage filtering. There are all sorts of things the corporate media decides not to cover that independent journalists do, like poverty, mass incarceration, U.S.-caused civilian casualties, how the Washington agenda is skewed by money, and these days, pretty much anything that is good news for Biden.

But mainstream media still bases its reports on evidence, not on whim. It doesn’t hide key elements of an ongoing story, under any circumstance. Fox cannot say the same.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Mike.....I rarely watch any cable or tv news and so any replies to my comments here that throw out Fox News as a means to belittle my comments are unwarranted,  There are plenty of news sources and a lot of good investigative journalists to turn to, such as Megan Fox, who are conscientious enough to not just run wih the narrative of the mainstream corporate media. The NYT and the Washington Post may be your choice for news, but they are hardly pure as snow from seeking to advance an agenda of their own editors' political progressive ideology....just ask Bari Weiss..  I had to chuckle when you mentioned that the "mainstream media still bases its reports on evidence, not on whim. It doesn’t hide key elements of an ongoing story, under any circumstance."  I can think of many lies told to the public to advance the mainstream media's progressive agenda recently such as Nick Sandman and Kyle Rittenhouse, but there are many more. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/christalgo/2021/04/27/mainstream-medias-incessant-lies-are-tearing-america-apart-n2588565

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/29/the_medias_top_lies_and_spins_about_covid-19.html#!

Michael McLeod

mm it heartens me that you don't gobble down faux news and I did my best to qualify if you will take a look at what I said.

Meanwhile here's a well supported examination of what's at stake in a critical aspect of this right/left push and pull. It seems you are saying any move towards coordinating restraint among nations is a scary thing. To me a dead planet is just as scary. And a lot of those assumptions seemed to be of the hyperbolic boogie man variety that Fox tends to carry the flag for.

I'm thinking overall that our generation will not be well thought of when we are gone.

Here's the story I mentioned:

Yesterday, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia rug-pulled Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, committing a betrayal that could shape the character of climate politics in this country for decades to come. Manchin reportedly told Schumer that he could not support any energy or climate investments in the comprehensive Democratic bill meant to enact President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. He also said that he could not support any new tax provisions on corporations or the wealthy.

I have been somewhat sympathetic to Manchin’s concerns in the past, criticizing Schumer earlier this year for ignoring his worries about inflation and the deficit. Even though Manchin had every reason to obstruct climate action—he receives more donations from the oil-and-gas industry than any other politician, for instance, and he and his family have made millions of dollars selling coal to a single power plant in West Virginia—he was right that the process has generally been a mess, and that neither Biden nor congressional Democrats have taken inflation seriously enough since it began to boil over last year.

But this reversal has burned through any remaining goodwill for Manchin among the press corps and, I suspect, the rest ofhis caucus. That’s because adopting a climate-and-new-taxes framework for the bill was Manchin’s idea, and Manchin has spent the past few months negotiating its specifics with Schumer. For Manchin to back out now, so late in the process, reveals his profound fickleness as a negotiator. Manchin looks not like a levelheaded voice of fiscal moderation, but as windblown and capricious as the weather vane on his houseboat.

Manchin’s decision has almost nothing to recommend it. It is extraordinarily bleak for the climate, putting America’s targets under the Paris Agreement out of reach and throwing a wrench into international efforts to hold back emissions. It subverts American economic and military competitiveness, allowing China’s state-subsidized industries to complete their domination of the nascent clean-energy sector.

And it will worsen inflation. Because the bill would have spent less money than it collected in taxes, the bill was more likely to cool the economy down than heat it up. By reducing long-term demand for oil, the bill was likely to lower gasoline prices—one of the biggest causes of the country’s recent inflation. An earlier version of the package would have saved U.S. consumers hundreds of dollars in energy costs over the next eight years, according to an independent analysis from researchers at Princeton.

Such a foolish decision caps an enormously stupid negotiating process. Manchin has repeatedly set a new goal post, talked Democrats into aiming for it, then walked away at the three-yard line. At the same time, Democrats repeatedly acted against their own interests. Besides ignoring Manchin’s concerns about inflation for too long, Schumer secretly signed an agreement with Manchin last summer that provisionally set the bill’s top-line budget impact at $1.5 trillion, but the majority leader then kept it secret from the rest of the caucus, who were banking on a $3.5 trillion plan.

It is so typical, so stupidly typical, of this legislative process that it might not even be over yet. This morning, Manchin told a West Virginia radio station that he had not unequivocally shut the door on the climate provisions, but had only meant to put them on pause. If Democrats want to pass a bill before the August recess, he said, then they have to give up on the climate provisions. But if they’re willing to wait again—this time ’til September, so that Manchin can see the inflation statistics due to be released next month—then he might consider adding the provisions back in. Democrats have been loath to push such a crucial decision so close to the midterm elections, but technically lawmakers could wait as late as September 30, when the instructions for reconciliation, the parliamentary mechanism that allows Democrats to pass legislation through the Senate with a simple majority, expire.

Or perhaps not. This reversal has incinerated so much charity among lawmakers that talks may essentially be over. That will mean that Biden’s ambitious climate goals will be left to the Environmental Protection Agency, which just saw the scope of its potential powers limited by the Supreme Court, and to state and local governments. Much like last month’s Supreme Court decision, the ultimate consequence will be to make climate action more expensive.

So America’s climate negligence endures. The country’s failure on this front underlies its greater abdication of moral leadership in the world. That is not just due to Senator Manchin’s negligence, of course. It is also the collective responsibility of the Republican Party, whose 50 senators are even more resolutely against investing in clean energy than he is.

The United States, after all, has put more carbon pollution into the atmosphere than any other country, and it has failed for the past three decades to pass any major federal legislation fighting climate change. The Senate, in particular, has failed: That chamber alone prevented the country from adopting President Bill Clinton’s energy tax in 1993, and President Barack Obama’s climate bill in 2009, and now President Biden’s clean-energy investments in 2022. The Senate has been blocking climate legislation for nearly as long as most Americans can remember. (And how ironic that President Joe Biden, who was a senator for 36 years and who was elected to the presidency in part on his promise to make America’s government work normally again, could not reach a deal.)

This status quo cannot persist. It is a scientific certainty: In the coming years, climate change will make itself known through larger wildfires, widening droughts, and more murderous floods. As I wrote earlier this year, severe heat waves and other climate-related disasters are already contributing to shortages and inflation around the world. The era of climate-driven inflation—call it “heatflation”—has arrived. And as climate change continues to sap humanity’s wealth, this stain will persist on Manchin’s record and on ours.

Neither can this accursed state of affairs last forever in politics. As geriatric politicians have blocked climate action at the national level, younger generations—here meaning virtually anyone younger than 50—have turned to corporate climate action as a salve. Yet now Republicans are trying to block companies from reducing their emissions too, casting it as so much wokery. They control enough state governments and enough of the courts that they might succeed. And so an entire generation’s sense of action, their feeling of historical possibility, has been arrested, trapped in the clotting arteries of our elderly leaders and hidebound system.

This moment feels interminable. But what is unsustainable cannot be sustained. If one man can block the industrial development of what is, for now, the world’s hegemon, then its hegemony must be very frail indeed. A pall has settled on our institutions, on Washington, D.C., itself. We shall be lucky to see it lifted.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike, ​​​​​​

Unless I am mistaken you had reported (Post 11373) that same study some time ago on this Forum. Perhaps not and maybe I just had a "deja vu" experience.

Anyway, without jumping into the context of it, I would say that the design of the study was poor. If a medical study had been so designed it would have never passed muster to be published in a credible medical journal. It certainly was not a double blinded, crossover study and it paid people to participate only on one arm of the study. In fact, there was no second arm where "mainstream" viewers would be paid to watch Fox. And perhaps, a follow-up as to whether participants had gone back to their regular viewing habits a year later would have completed a "crossover" phase. 

Just my thoughts...

Jim 

John Jackson

Oil prices have now dropped 25% from their recent highs.  MM, and others, I’d love to crow that this is the result of actions the Biden Administration has taken, but it’s not (and neither was the recent run-up in oil prices due to Biden).  Instead these gyrations are caused by market forces.  Conservatives used to talk about markets in reverential terms (“the magic of the marketplace”) but today those on the far right (who have hijacked the Republican Party) have little understanding of markets or economics and (surprise!) prefer to lay everything at the feet of the government (except of course when the Republicans hold power).

The older I get (and I’m pretty old now) the more obvious it is to me that difficult and persistent problems (racism, the condition of our inner cities, the immigration situation, income inequality and especially the inability of those without college educations to earn a decent living, and, yes, inflation) are difficult because they are caused by a number of factors.   If these problems were caused by a single factor, we’d all recognize the cause and act to fix the problem.

Yesterday I read an AP (Associated Press) story on inflation and I thought it was an accurate and balanced description of where we are today:

“The U.S. inflation surge erupted from the swift rebound from the 2020 pandemic recession, and it steadily accelerated as spending outstripped the availability of labor and supplies. Generous government aid and super-low rates engineered by the Fed sent consumers on a spending spree that surprised businesses. Factories, ports and freight yards were overwhelmed, leading to shortages, delays and higher prices. Russia’s war against Ukraine magnified energy and food inflation”.

I underlined the “generous government aid” part because if you want to blame Biden, I’ll agree that the final Covid aid package enacted last year played a role.  But it’s hardly the whole story and there were two aid packages approved during the final year of the Trump administration that were even larger. 

MM recently said “it is the government in Washington D.C. who actually controls the quantity of money as they are the only entity that can print money, the administration taking up residence there bears the burden of responsibility.”  But by far the most important government body that “prints money” and is responsible for controlling interest rates and inflation is the Federal Reserve and until May (months after inflation  took off) its seven members, including chairman Lewis Powell, all served during the four years of the Trump administration.                                                                                                                                    

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

John - I would ask who is it that keeps sending more & more spending bills to Congress? (& yes Trump did as well!) Biden & the Democrsts have owned DC for almost 2 years, so why haven't they stopped the gravy train of endless spending necessitating the printing of money America doesn't' have? This is all following the Cloward-Piven strategy from the late 60's....overwhelm the system thus creating a crisis so that the government can step in to "solve" it. Everything happening today to bring about Agenda 30 (one world order, the great reset or the 4th industrial revolution....whatever Gates/Schwab/Soros et al want to name it) was accelerated by the Covid lockdowns around the world. The nations of the world are experiencing a well-funded, well-organized & deliberate take down of the world's economies to bring about the globalists rise to power.  When the world turns its back on God & His laws & the natural order He designed, evil is allowed to flourish & brings about misery & destruction.  Only the people can stop what is coming & I believe the push back has finally begun as evidenced by the Canadian truckers convoy, the protests in Germany, Italy, France, the farmers in the Netherlands & the events in Sri Lanka.  

Michael McLeod

Jim: 

I see your point - points, rather.

And on reflection it is narrow minded of me to assume that anyone with a political bent of a certain direction gets all their news from fox.

But by the same token I resent what strikes me as a much more narrow minded trope to dismiss "mainstream corporate media" which is the equivalent of saying "all mainstream corporate accountants" or "all people who graduated from mainstream universities" - it certain does convey a dismissive, self imposed tunnel vision and a slur towards countless dedicated, well trained, award winning journalists. And its end result is to make yourself  vulnerable to the very real manipulation of information by certain greedy orchestrators who want to foster your paranoia to their own ends. Trump is only the most obvious example of that quite successful strategy. I've been trying to get that point across here for some time now.

I think loaded words are interesting. Just saying "corporate" implies a certain soulessness and group think. I can tell you from experience that journalists are the most independent minded, argumentative bunch of misfits you'll ever see. And yes I suppose as a rule journalists are progressive. I happen to see that as a compliment.

I think the way out, on both sides, is to be more rigorous and specific in shaping and presenting opinions reflection an increasingly complex modern world. That was an easy sentence to write but it is so damn hard in practice.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

While I am not a fan of Starbucks, I empathize with the situation the company is facing. Columbus is no exception.  My son-in-law's brother is a Columbus Police Officer and is currently patrolling the downtown area up through the Short North.  He has cautioned us against going to the Short North on weekends due to the prevalence of gang related crimes.  He said morale in the police department is poor in part because once they arrest an individual and take them to the station to book them, they are soon thereafter realeased back to the streets to resume their criminal activity.  It seems that many are juveniles and there is a lack of interest in prosecuting them.  He also said that since the mayor granted early retirement incentives, to purportedly recruit more diverse and inclusive persons, many experienced officers have left the force, and where they use to have 4,000 applicants they are now lucky to get 500 and of those perhaps 5-10% are qualified.  I can only imagine what this will mean to the safety of our city.  We are also witnessing more and more homeless "encampments", even in and around Clintonville, as mental illness and addictions are left unaddressed. 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/america-has-become-unsafe-starbucks-ceo-rips-politicians-in-decaying-cities-after-closing-16-urban-stores?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR229x5GhrgoToudMfJHJM_syhEP03Jf4URufAPXBdJE0D-nStT1jVbJJzs

David Mitchell

Some interesting discussion of inflation and the results of the "Fed" and "rates". But I must have missed some other parts of the discussion. I heard no mention of the "Money Supply" (M1, M2, and M3). And we could have plunged deeper into intellectual boredom with some discussion of the "Austrian School" (Hayek) vs. Keynesian economics.

But that would cause my eyeballs to roll back even further than they already have. Plenty to blame on the Donald before Joe ever showed up. I can emember way back in ancient history when Repubicans used to worry about the deficit. Inflation doesn't just "flare up" over night.  

And there appears to be a good deal of "greedflation" in play these days. Several industires have hiked prices with no apparent supply cost increases - other than shipping, which I realize has gooten a bit crazy in some channels.

------------

And I'm in full agreement with tougher sentencing in some areas of the law. 

--------------

Now, who do you like in the "Open"?

David Mitchell

I seem to recall this was the first rock and roll record my older sisters ever bought - at the record store at Graceland shopping center - and played it over, and over,,,,and over.

and over.

Michael McLeod

I'm hunkered down by my pool indefinitely. But I guess this would be a great time to travel abroad, where the buck can buy more.

The value of the U.S. dollar is the strongest it has been in a generation, devaluing currencies around the world and unsettling the outlook for the global economy as it upends everything from the cost of a vacation abroad to the profitability of multinational companies.

The dollar lubricates the global economy. It is one side of about 90 percent of all foreign exchange transactions, accounting for $6 trillion in activity every day before the pandemic, from tourists using their credit cards to companies making major international investments.

As the world’s most important currency, the dollar often rises in times of turmoil, in part because investors consider it to be relatively safe and stable. The dollar has gained in recent months as inflation has soared, interest rates have increased and the worries over growth have worsened. “That’s a pretty tough mix,” said Kamakshya Trivedi, the co-head of a market research group at Goldman Sachs.

The main way to gauge the dollar’s strength is by indexing it against a basket of currencies of major trading partners like Japan and the eurozone. By that measure, the dollar is at a 20-year high, after gaining more than 10 percent this year, a huge move for an index that typically shifts by tiny fractions each day.

In the past week, the yen sank to a 24-year low against the dollar and the euro fell to parity, a one-for-one exchange rate, with the dollar for the first time since 2002. But pick just about any currency — the Colombian peso or the Indian rupee, the Polish zloty or the South African rand — and it has probably lost value against the dollar, especially over the past six months or so.

The factors roiling the global economy partly explain why the dollar has suddenly become so much stronger.

As central bankers around the world try to tame inflation by raising interest rates, the Federal Reserve is moving more quickly and more aggressively than most. As a result, rates are now markedly higher in the United States than they are in many other large economies, luring investors attracted by the higher returns on even relatively conservative investments such as Treasury bonds. As money has poured in, the value of the dollar has increased.

“It’s a very, very strong dollar,” said Mark Sobel, a former Treasury official who now serves as the U.S. chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a think tank. The currency has been stronger on only three occasions since the 1960s.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/07/16/justice-for-all-over-50-attacks-on-pro-life-groups-since-may-and-not-a-single-arrest-n1613367

On May 15, the Women’s March declared: “Our Summer of Rage is officially beginning. We’re prepared to rage for Roe all summer, culminating in a Women’s Convention in Houston, Texas. We won’t rest until abortion rights are protected.” So far, the summer has seen plenty of rage: Catholic Vote reported that as of Friday, “More than 50 pregnancy resource centers and offices of pro-life groups have been attacked and vandalized,” and “Pro-abortion domestic terrorists have claimed responsibility — and are promising more attacks.”

Michael McLeod

At this point I wouldn't want to predict whether or not I'll be able to make it to Columbus for the reunion. But in deference to that event, and the conviviality I'm sure will prevail,  I'll not be posting any opinion pieces between now and then. 

Along those lines, here's a lighthearted column I wrote:

https://winterparkmag.com/2022/06/27/hes-the-earl-of-the-chicken-strip/

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Thanks Mike for sharing your article on "chicken strip". New start-up restaurants continue to come and go in Columbus serving all manner of palatal tastes, including those lining the high street corridor in Clintonville.  Along that note, this morning I watched this interesting video on one small pices of the history of Clintonville focusing on Olentngy Park. 

https://fb.watch/elmdv1NtHE/

Michael McLeod

ok that's boring let's argue.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Michael McLeod

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Texas is often hot, but not like this: Current forecasts have the temperature in Dallas hitting 109 degrees Tuesday, with highs in triple digits well into next week.

Britain, on the other hand, used to have a well-deserved reputation as a cool, rainy island. But as I write, the temperature in London is projected to hit 102 degrees Tuesday.

You have to be willfully blind — unfortunately, a fairly common ailment among politicians — not to see that global warming has stopped being a debatable threat that will catch up to us only years from now. It’s our current reality, and if climate scientists — whose warnings have been overwhelmingly vindicated — are right, it’s going to get much worse.

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And Joe Manchin just pulled the plug on what may have been the Biden administration’s last chance to do something — anything — meaningful about climate change.

I don’t want to talk much about Manchin. In a few months he’ll probably be irrelevant, one way or another: The odds are either that Republicans will take the Senate or that Democrats, aided by the awfulness of many G.O.P. candidates, will gain some seats. And he wouldn’t have mattered in the first place but for the sickness that has infected America’s body politic.

Still, for what it’s worth, my take on Manchin is both less and more cynical than what you usually hear.

Yes, he represents a state that still thinks of itself as coal country, even though mining is now a trivial part of its economy, dwarfed by jobs in health care and social assistance — with much of the latter paid for by the federal government. Yes, he gets more political contributions from the energy industry than any other member of Congress. Yes, he has a large financial conflict of interest arising from his family’s ownership of a coal business.

Yet my guess is that his Lucy-with-the-football act has as much to do with vanity as with money. (And nothing at all to do with inflation.) His act has, after all, kept him in the political limelight month after month. And if you don’t believe that great events can be shaped, great disasters caused, by sheer personal pettiness, all I can say is that you probably haven’t read much history.

But none of this would have mattered if Republicans weren’t unified in their opposition to any action to limit global warming. This opposition has only grown more entrenched as the evidence for looming catastrophe has grown — and the likely financial cost of effective action has declined.

Let’s talk about the political economy of climate policy.

It has long been painfully obvious that voters are reluctant to accept even small short-run costs in the interest of averting long-run disaster. This is depressing, but it’s a fact of life, one that no amount of haranguing seems likely to change. This is why I’ve long been skeptical of the position, widely held among economists, that a carbon tax — putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions — has to be the central plank of climate policy. It’s true that emission taxes are the Econ 101 solution to pollution, but realistically they just aren’t going to happen in America.

The good news is that spectacular technological progress in renewable energy may offer a foundation for an alternative political strategy, one based on carrots rather than sticks. The idea — which underlay Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan — was to rely not on taxes but on subsidies and public investment to encourage a transition to clean energy. That way climate action could be framed not as sacrifice but as opportunity, a way to create new jobs wrapped up in a broader program of much-needed public investment.

The theory, which I naïvely subscribed to, was that such a strategy, while it might be less efficient than one centered on carbon taxes, would be much easier to sell to the American people, and that there would be at least a few Republican politicians willing to sign on to policies that promised concrete rewards for workers, contractors and so on, without imposing new burdens on their constituents.

But Republicans — and, of course, Manchin — were unmoved. I don’t think they were solely motivated by the desire to see Biden fail. They’re just deeply hostile to clean energy.

There’s an obvious parallel between the politics of green energy and the politics of Covid-19. Many people chafed at the restrictions imposed to limit the pandemic’s spread; even mask requirements involve a bit of inconvenience. But vaccination seemed to offer a win-win solution, letting Americans protect themselves as well as others. Who could possibly object?

The answer was, much of the G.O.P. Vaccination became and remains an intensely partisan issue, with deadly consequences: Death rates since vaccines became widely available have been far higher in strongly Republican areas than in Democratic areas.

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The fact is that one of America’s two major political parties appears to be viscerally opposed to any policy that seems to serve the public good. Overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of such policies doesn’t help — if anything, it hurts, because the modern G.O.P. is hostile to science and scientists.

And that hostility, rather than the personal quirks of one small-state senator, is the fundamental reason we appear set to do nothing while the planet burns.

Joseph D. McCarthy

George Bernard Shaw Said that:

"English is the easiest language to speak badly."

David Mitchell

I think my dad must have talked about his childhood and Olentngy Park most of his life. They used to have a high dive tower (like Olympic) that he loved to dive off of as a very young kid. But as he grew older, he became more and more afraid to go off of the highest section.  If memory serves, he said that diving tower finally collapsed into the pool and they tore the entire remaining portion out.

Im pretty sure that bowling alley in the later development was where I bowled for the very first time. 

James Hamilton, M. D.

And the Viruses Keep Coming!

Polio, really?  Iron lungs? Paralysis? Don't go to swimming pools? Long lines for more shots? Deja Vu to our childhood fears?

One case in the state of New York does not an epidemic (let alone a pandemic) make. 

This virus is not a respiratory one, it is an enterovirus, spread by the fecal-oral route. (SEE ADDENDUM BELOW). From what I understand, this index case seems to have occurred in a patient who probably contracted it from a person from another country who was recently vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine (OPV, Sabin type which has not been available in the USA for decades) but is commonly used in "developing" nations. That type of vaccine is partially designed to allow spread to others via that fecal-oral route to help create a sort of herd immunity. Unfortunately, some of those live attenuated virus particles can become infectious and actually cause disease in some unvaxxed individuals. (This gets a little complex.) 

Info on this case is slow in coming but, in the next few days, I hope we learn a lot more. 

Jim 

Addendum 23July 2022:

Although the primary route of transmission of polio is fecal-oral, it can also be spread by pharyngeal secretions. 

Michael McLeod

EVERYTHING keeps getting more complicated. I'd complain if I didn't realize complaining about it as opposed to absorbing it as best we can just makes it worse.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

I repeat for those who do not know....I am not a "Trumpster".  I have FB posts from 2015-2016 that clearly indicate my disdain for the character traits of either 2016 candidates. And so, if you decide to read this Twitter thread on why many Americans care nothing about the J6 one-sided hearings - this thread pretty much lays it all out there.  If you disagree, I accept that.  I only ask that you accept that those who do not accept the validity of the hearings are not anti-democracy or Trump worshippers.  

ihttps://twitter.com/lone_rides/status/1550473125078487040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1550473125078487040%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2022%2F07%2F22%2Fthis-brutal-thread-breaks-out-the-puppets-and-crayons-to-explain-to-nevertrump-and-lefties-why-most-americans-dgaf-about-jan-6%2F